To tell, or not to tell.

I'm going for a short walk again. To the crappy estate around the corner from my Mum's house. This is where my Dad lives and this is where I go on certain nights and certain days of the week. I walk up the side alley that separates the nice bit of this area from the not so nice bit. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind Dad's flat. It's in the better part of the dodgy area so I can't complain. It's way more child friendly than where he used to live when I was growing up. My father has four children in total. My three younger, very much younger, siblings and myself. There are two girls, Kimi and I, and two boys, Jesse and Chris. Kimi and Chris share a mother, being the two younger ones, Kimi at eight months and Chris at three years. Jesse has a completely different mother altogether and he's ten. I'm fifteen, soon to be sixteen and I obviously am the oldest with my fathers only wife. After my father and mother split my Dad went a bit weird. He had a one night stand when drunk and ended up with Jesse. The girl I think was wanting to get together and have a life as such but freaked out after the child was born and legged it. Which was nice. My Dad stayed away from women after that and worked on getting a better job and bringing up Jesse. He, sadly, didn't have a great education so he couldn't go very far but tried his hardest to get to the top of what he could to earn a comfortable living. About five years ago he got together with a woman he met at work and they lived together for quite a while. They had Chris and Kimi before she broke up with him a couple months ago and got herself a younger boyfriend. She does look after her kids when Dad's working but apart from that he is their sole carer and it drains him. I can see the physical evidence in the bags beneath his eyes.

"Hey honey!" He drawls when I walk in.

"Hey Dad. How's Kimi?"

"Sleeping. She's got a cold, poor wee mite." He brow furrows in sadness and I can't help but feel that he's the poor wee mite.

I take a seat next to him and bounce Chris on my lap as he yells, "Charlie Chop Chop Chop!" which is a game we play. I play the game as he sings the song to go along with it and talk to my Dad. Jesse is sitting on the computer and he nods at me to acknowledge my presence. My Dad's kids sure are mix matched considering none of us look very similar but this for some reason brings us closer.

_~=*=~_

It's rather late and I'm lying in the bottom bunk of the bed because Jesse has, yet again, claimed the top. Chris is in a separate bed across the room and Kimi is in her cot, right beside me, sniffling and coughing her way through the night. She starts to cry and I wait for her to either settle down or be tended to by her Dad. Dad is too tired to come and get her and he sleeps through the noise so I get up and go to comfort her. The noise has woken Chris and he is crouched by her cot arm through the bars trying to stroke her head.

"Don't cwy Kimi. It's night time, you should be asweep."

I almost giggle. Jesse is still asleep. I swear, that boy can sleep through anything! I tell Chris to go to bed, if he does I'll read him a story. This makes him barrel towards the bookshelf and pick one of his many books about cars out before going to his bed and sitting patiently for me. I pick up Kimi and do the night shift, even though I have school tomorrow. I'm not going to lie to you. As she cries no matter what I do I want to shout at her and tell her to shut up. Sometimes I really want to just throw her away and be done with it. Sometimes I question whether I love her or not. Sometimes I blame my tired, over worked, stressed father and want to get him up to look after his child. I think, It's his own fault for spreading his seed, as they say, and getting himself in this situation in the first place! But sometimes, none of this matters because a baby crying, especially if it's a baby you love, is the most heart wrenching sound in the world.